… the average man in the West is not “in his body”. If not in his body, then where is
he? And who is he? To be embodied is to experience one’s body as the center of
one’s existence, to feel alive, to perceive bodily states as they change from
pleasure to pain, energy to fatigue, from vitality and excitement to calm and
tranquillity. [R.D.] Laing and [Alexander] Lowen are arguing that such a state of
embodiment is rare: more typically, people repress body-experience and find
themselves anesthetic to their bodies.